Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner
Kill Zone
Amazon US HC Amazon Canada HC
Jim Silver
Class/Genre: Mystery Thriller
Simon & Schuster, Jan 1999, $23.00, 320 pp.
In 1970, President Nixon announces the major withdrawal of American troops from Viet Nam. To the soldiers still fighting in the jungles of Southeast Asia, it was a rallying call to come home and not serve on any more potentially deadly missions. However, the fighting still goes on and Major Ralph Longbaugh has to send one of squads into one of the most dangerous parts of Nam. Instead the soldiers kill Ralph, setting it up so that it would seem that he died at the hands of a Cong ambush.
A decade later, Ralph's son Aaron serves in the Army. Aaron believes that his father died in honorable combat, but soon learns how his father actually was murdered. A trained killer, over the next few years Aaron successfully goes after his father's assailants with a gleeful abandon. However, a wrongful death claim leads to an insurance investigation that begins an inquiry into Aaron's background.
KILL ZONE starts off as one of the great vengeance novels of the nineties. That is until Aaron reaches Ohio (slightly under half-way into the book) and the story line bogs down with the wrongful death investigation. Aaron is a complex character who will actually illicit reader empathy as he goes about his deadly business. Jim Silver's tale reads fast and exciting, leaving sub-genre fans both delighted with his story and frustrated over what could have been if he stayed on the narrow path of a serial killer seeking vengeance.
Harriet Klausner
Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner
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